Tramping on Life Part 100

The next morning I was in the office of the _Independent_, visiting with the literary editor, good old Dr. William Hayes Ward. He was a man of eighty years ... a scholar in English and the Greek and Latin cla.s.sics....

Once, when on a vacation he had written me that, as pastime, he had read the whole of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ over again. In the Greek, of course.

His abused eyes floated uneasily behind a double pair of lenses ... a dissenting minister ... of the old school ... he seemed to me far more youthful, more invigorating, than any of my other more youthful friends in the literary and magazine world.

We talked and talked of poetry. He brought down a huge treatise on English versification, translated from some German scholar's life-research--to prove a point ... he discussed what Sidney Lanier--whom he had known--might have done with metrics, had he only lived longer....

And "no ... no ... take my advice," he said, "don't go down to Eden."

There was something so vaguely deprecatory in his voice that it brought from me the question--"why not? isn't Penton Baxter all right?"

"Oh, yes," in the same deprecatory tone,--"he's all right enough, alone--but, together, you'd be like two balloons without ballast. He might get you, or you might get him, into some sort of mess."

"Why Dr. Ward, what do you mean?"

"Penton is always protesting about something or other,--always starting fantastic schemes ... he's just finished with his Parna.s.sus Palace experiment, which brought him a lot of newspaper notoriety ... which is to me distasteful, extremely distasteful ... yet Baxter," he added hastily, "is a real force ... he can think of more original projects in a given s.p.a.ce of time than anyone else I know."

"I look on him as a great and wonderful man!"

"Mark my word, Mr. Gregory, you'll find yourself in some sort of mix-up if you go down to Eden to live with him. You're both too mad and inflammable to be in the same neighbourhood."

Using all his powers of persuasion, Dr. William Hayes Ward tried to explain to me how I owed it both to Mr. Derek and Mr. Mackworth to finish my play.

"Have you no place else to go to, beside Eden?"

"I could run out to Perfection City--and camp out there."

"Now that's a good idea ... why not try that?"

"Johnnie, had your lunch yet?" it was Dr. Percival Hammond, the managing editor, who was asking, leaning out from his cubbyhole where he sat before his desk.

"No, sir!"

"Come and share mine!"

I said good-bye to Dr. Ward and walked down the corridor to where Hammond sat. He looked more the fashionable club man than ever, though he did have a slight sprinkling of dandruff on his coat collar. I was quick to notice this, as I had been quick to notice Miss Martin's few, close-scizzored hairs on her fine, thinking face.

Lunch!

But I was not to be taken out to a meal in a restaurant, as anyone might expect, but Hammond sat me down on a chair by his side, and he handed me a gla.s.s of b.u.t.termilk and a few compressed oatmeal cakes.

I had stayed over night at the Phi-Mu House, at Columbia, with Ally. I had stayed up nearly all night, rather, arguing, in behalf of extreme socialism, with the boys ... till people, hearing our voices through the open windows, had actually gathered in the street without.

"You're utterly mad, but we like you!" said one of the boys.

In the morning, before I clutched my suitcase in my hand and started for Perfection City, Ally showed me something that had come in the morning mail, which startled me. It was a clipping from the Laurel _Globe_--a vilely slanderous article, headed, "Good Riddance."...

And first it lied that I had run away from my "confederates" of the Scoop Club, leaving them to bear the onus of the investigation of the town's morals ... which was, of course, not true ... I had made a special point of going to the sheriff and asking him if I would be needed. If so, I would defer my trip East. And he had replied that it would be all right for me to go....

But the second count--the personal part of the story, was more atrocious ... it intimated that I had, during my sojourn at Laurel, been an undesirable that would have made Villon pale with envy ... an habitue of the Bottoms ... that I had been sleeping with negro women and rolling about with their men, drunk.

I was so furious at this that I dropped my suitcase, clenched my hands, and swore that I was straightway going to freight it back and knock all his teeth down "Senator's" Blair's throat ... the dirty sycophant! The lousy bootlicker! the nasty, putty-bodied slug!

Once more Baxter wrote me, urging me to come to Eden. He told me his wife would welcome me ... and jested clumsily that his secretary would be just the girl to marry me and take care of me....

Jested? I did not know the man yet ... he meant it.

Though I was possessed of a curious premonitory warning that I must not accept his invitation and was, besides, settled in a hut by the lake sh.o.r.e, yet I was tempted to go to Eden....

For one thing, Perfection City was no longer the place of ideals it had been ... it was now a locality where the poorer bourgeoisie sent their wives and children, for an inexpensive summer outing....

Wavering this way and that, I sent a telegram which clinched the matter.

"Will leave for Eden to-morrow morning. John Gregory."

Not far from the little suburban station to which I had changed, lay the Single Tax Colony of Eden. When I dropped off the train and found no one to greet me, I was slightly piqued. Of a labourer in a nearby field I inquired the way to Eden. He straightened his back, paused in his work.

He gave me the direction--"and there by the roadside you'll find a sort of wooden archway with a sign over it ... you step in and follow the path, and that will take you right into the centre of the community. But what do want to go to Eden for? they're all a bunch of nuts there!"

"Maybe I might be a nut, too!"

The old man laughed.

"Well, good-bye and good luck, sonny."

Soon I reached the gateway, trailing my heavy suitcase ... heavy mostly with ma.n.u.scripts....

A woodland path led me into what seemed, and was, a veritable forest; boughs interlaced above, with glimpses of blue sky between. In inters.p.a.ces of trees wild flowers grew. Luxuriant summer was abroad.

I stepped out of the forest straightway into the community. It was in a beautiful open s.p.a.ce like a natural meadow.

There stood the houses of the colonists--Single Taxers, Anarchists, Socialists, Communists,--folk of every shade of radical opinion ... who here strove to escape the galling mockeries of civilisation and win back again to pastoral simplicity.

It was a community such as William Morris or some Guild Socialist of a medieval turn of mind might have conceived. It was the Dream of John Ball visualised.

"When Adam dolve and Eve span Who was then the gentleman?"

Toy houses picturesquely set under trees that fringed the Common ...